


he is hers

by summoner_yuna_of_besaid



Series: Dragon Age Codexes [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Trans Male Character, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 08:49:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3762079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summoner_yuna_of_besaid/pseuds/summoner_yuna_of_besaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seolta considers his lover and wonders how she could desire someone like him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	he is hers

He trembles to touch her.  She notices, of course; nothing gets past her perceptive gaze, least of all any secrets of his.  Seolta never was good at subtlety or secrecy.

He eyes his upturned, calloused hands, rough and scarred and he hesitates.  Vivienne takes his hand; places hers in his, shows where the groved edges of the staff have worn into her flesh, where scars of her own run like thin lines over her skin.

Vivienne is not a porcelain doll, he knows that.  But it is hard to ignore this enormous divide.  He wasn’t raised Dalish, not like his sister.  The city was his home, with its squalor and wretchedness.  The alienage had felt like another world compared to the palace his father worked in.  That palace was her home.  Not his.

Not that the woods had prepared him much, either.  Dalish had their own ideas about love.  Prove your worth to the clan, prove your skill as a hunter.  Earn your keep.  Love was second, survival always first.  There wasn’t anyone he’d wanted, anyway.  And no one who would have wanted him.

Seolta dresses in rags, or they might as well be.  They’re old and threadbare and familiar.  He takes comfort in the old tears and worn leather.  But she, she shines with her smile and her grace.  Vivienne is a glittering gem and he, weather-beaten stone.

She holds his hands in hers, and he blurts out the questions.  Asks how she could want him, how she could be with him, and wasn’t she ashamed, that he was rude and crude and would rather roll around in mud than bathe and had a penchant for coming home with bruises and blisters and blood covering him head to foot, like some barbarian.

Her grip tightens; her eyes glisten as she smiles.  Vivienne says she is here for exactly that reason; because he just asked her these things.  No games, no manipulation, no second guessing.  Straight-forward honesty came as second nature to him, and the thought of lying or cheating never even occurred to him.  Ambition was not a word in his vocabulary.

He didn’t want status, power, fame.  He wanted  _her_.

“Course I do,” Seolta tells her, as if he’s shocked at the thought that anything else could be true.  “I’d have to be a fool not to!  No lie, I wake up every morning and I slap myself, and I say ‘Seolta, you really are awake, and this lovely woman is right next to you, and you’d better not fuck this up - sorry, sorry, um - mess this up' - am I saying too much?”

He flushes and bites his lip and asks her why she’s crying, and she answers with the truth: that he never questioned that she always told him the truth, always, that he never doubts her, never misleads her.

He is faith, and heart, and he is hers.


End file.
